Most stores that are visited by customers have one or more point-of-sale ("POS") terminals, such as cash registers. Store cashiers use POS terminals for calculating the total price of a purchase (one or more products) and the amount of change due to a customer. Some POS terminals furthermore track purchases made and adjust a database of store inventory accordingly.
The amount of change due is the difference between the purchase price and the amount tendered by the customer. Customers typically tender whole number cash amounts in the form of bills of paper money, while purchase prices are most often non-whole number amounts. Accordingly, the amount of change due to a customer at a POS terminal typically includes one or more coins, which the POS terminal or cashier dispenses to the customer.
Receiving and carrying change, especially coins, is an annoyance to many customers. Consequently, customers often are forced to tender non-whole number cash amounts in order to dispose of their unwanted coins and/or reduce the coins that would otherwise be given to them as change for their purchase. Coins and bills that are tendered by the customer are collected by the cashier at the POS terminal.
Both dispensing coins to and collecting coins from a customer increases the amount of time a cashier spends processing a purchase, and therefore increases the amount of time that customers wait in line at a POS terminal. Accordingly, businesses must pay wages for time spent handling coins, and customers must experience delays as coins are exchanged between cashiers and customers.
In addition, it is possible that the cashier will make a mathematical error and dispense the wrong amount of change. Customers often anticipate such an error and count their change to assure that they received the correct amount. Such customers typically count their change before leaving the POS terminal, further delaying other customers.
Businesses incur costs associated with counting, rolling, banking and otherwise handling coins. By some estimates, businesses expend hundreds of thousands of hours and hundreds of millions of dollars each year just to handle coins.
In summary, the exchange of change, especially coins, between customers and POS terminals is costly, time-consuming and undesirable. Unfortunately, conventional POS terminals merely calculate purchase prices and amounts of change due, and cannot reduce the amount of change due nor the exchange of coins.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a system and method that reduced the amount of change due, and therefore reduced the coins exchanged between customers and cashiers at a POS terminal.